Tolbachik Volcano

Tolbachik is a pair of volcanoes at the southern end of the Klyuchevskaya group - Ostry, sharp and extinct, and Ploskiy, flat and active - and what people come for is the ground around them. The Great Tolbachik Fissure Eruption of 1975 to 1976 was one of the largest basaltic eruptions of the twentieth century, throwing up new cinder cones and burying a huge area under black ash and lava, and a second eruption in 2012 to 2013 added more, with lava flows that ran through and destroyed the volcanological field station. The result is square kilometres of black cinder desert, cones, lava tubes and a Dead Forest of ash-buried tree trunks. Because it looked like the Moon, Soviet engineers brought the Lunokhod prototypes here in the late 1960s to test them, which is a real piece of history rather than a marketing line. Access is off-road from Kozyrevsk.

What you actually see

• The black fields - square kilometres of cinder and lava from 1975 and 2012.
• The cones - new cinder cones thrown up by the fissure eruptions.
• The Dead Forest - ash-buried tree trunks standing in the cinder.
• The Lunokhod tests - Soviet lunar rover prototypes trialled here in the 1960s.

When to go

July to September; snow closes the tracks otherwise. Three days to a week. Off-road transfers from Kozyrevsk must be arranged.

Honest expectations

Access is a long off-road drive with no services. Cinder underfoot is hard walking and destroys footwear. Lava tubes need lights and care. Weather at altitude on an exposed field is severe. Bears are present.

Nearby

Klyuchevskaya Sopka is north in the same group; Kozyrevsk is the access town.